


Nine at the Crossroads

by lishiyo



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Dark Stiles, F/M, M/M, Slow Burn, action series, demon!Stiles AU, mystery series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:26:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lishiyo/pseuds/lishiyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the going gets tough, we do the things we never thought we'd do. For the power to protect his loved ones, Stiles sells his soul to the King of Hell. Life’s all well for a kid whose chest feels lighter without a soul anyways, but like they say - the devil’s in the details. </p><p>A lot of those details seem to involve Derek Hale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nine at the Crossroads

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by the demon!Stiles AU prompt where Stiles sacrifices his soul to Crowley for power. Hence, STILES IS DARK here, and much of this fic deals with exploring this darkness, before the light.
> 
> This fic will be a VERY PLOTTY and long action/mystery/suspense-oriented series, with a SLOW BURN when it comes to Sterek. It picks up a few months after Season 2 ends, in the new school year, and Derek and Stiles are at the same place they are in the S2 finale - so they're not even friends yet, really, and there's no signs of sexual interest. So, er, prepare for blue balls. 
> 
> You don't need to be familiar with the show Supernatural. The only character from there is Crowley, King of Hell. I'll try to explain as the fic goes along, but essentially, demons possess people who are emotionally vulnerable, using them as "meatsuits". So they look normal, until they use their demonic powers, which flood their eyes with black (or red, if they are Crossroads demons, who can make deals for human souls) and emit a sulfur smell. Demons have increased strength, agility, and telekinetic power, though their levels vary; a few have unique powers. Salt and iron cause them pain, without incapacitating or killing them. They can be captured in a Devil’s trap (though it depends on the complexity of the trap, relative to the demon) and exorcised with a Latin incantation. 
> 
> For this fic, Beacon Hills is now a suburb of a much larger city (the sort of big city that can support awesome gay nightclubs like Jungle during weekdays), but they live in the suburbs around one major high school so it still has a forested small town feel. Beacon Hills High is now rather large, supporting multiple sports teams and their correspondent cliques.
> 
> The primary POV will actually be Stiles's. This first chapter is the one and only that works through other POVs.
> 
> THANKS SO MUCH TO MY AWESOME BETA, MOONY (also known as No_More_Virtuous on tumblr, and CallMeBombshell on AO3).

 

“Stiles, I have a call for you from your father. It’s about your mother.”

 

*

 

He was startingly beautiful.

Crowley’s first glimpse of him was in the boy’s childhood, when the poppies were in full bloom. He was wearing a t-shirt that fell to his knees and clutching a woman’s hand. His ankles were too skinny for his sneakers. His eyes were too generous for his face. He was too young for his limbs, which knocked together like a fawn’s. He stumbled as the signal changed, and the woman smiled, and Crowley saw that she was already dying.

There was no reason for Crowley to remember him. This one’s light was no brighter than most. But from time to time, he would find himself taking a break from the more dreary duties demanded of the King of Hell, just to watch.

 

*

 

He grew into his limbs.

He made a friend, a dusky-skinned boy of the same age, whose light was the kind of unfiltered sunbright that annoyed Crowley.

He tugged on a girl’s braid, and earned a scowl for his efforts.

The woman had passed. It was an event that Crowley was disappointed to miss. (Though not quite as bad as the time he’d slept through the entire Holocaust.) But the next twist in the boy’s life that tangled before Crowley’s eyes almost mollified him.

The coming of wolves. First it was the boy’s friend. Then others, classmates, were bit. One by one, the people surrounding him turned.

The boy did not.

Crowley watched as the old man spat black bile, and the pretty strawberry blonde - now grown up - kissed an unfamiliar boy whose naked rear Crowley took the time to appreciate, as a connoisseur of such things. The boy was watching. His face was scratched. His eyes were wet.

 _Teenagers_ , Crowley thought. Such melodrama. No wonder he didn’t need to bother with cable in Hell.

 

*

 

Not long after, the demons came.

Not Crowley’s own, of course. Hell was - expanding. Reforming. Crowley was becoming very, very busy. He could not be expected to keep track of every one of his inbred cousins, and still retain a healthy sex life.

He did take a peek at the once sleepy city, in between the bread and the circuses. Other reasons. Derek Hale had always been an interest of his, well before the fire. Any idiot bottomfeeder could latch onto a soul that lost its entire family, but Crowley was the King of Hell, and he liked to think of himself as an expert at identifying potential.

This one had been born close to the night. The power was impressive, even for a werewolf; there was a kind of craving to it, a breach punched clean through to the other side that Crowley liked, a hole that could not be filled. But Crowley’s gaze snagged elsewhere. On _him_ again, who was, for once, alone, without the annoying friend.

Without the script, Crowley couldn’t tell whether the boy was winning or losing. But his light seemed dimmer, somehow. He was injured. And he was pretty, much prettier in the moonlight than Crowley would have guessed, from the first glimpse in childhood.

Something nudged in Crowley’s mind. A gear, shifting.

No one could argue the King of Hell was not, from time to time, ambitious.

 

*

 

The woman was not one of his favored pets, and she knew it.

“You want both,” she said, favoring him with a long-lidded gaze, from where she lounged on the silk in a sea of peach-scented vapors.

“Of course,” said Crowley, getting up to stretch himself beside the velveted table, where a panoply of crystal wineglasses had been conjured. “Pairs are all the rage this season. The werewolf first, so they won’t complain when I waste time on a more frivolous trinket.”

“I don’t mind the idea, Aleister,” said the woman, nibbling on a cherry. “But your execution is all wrong.”

“Darling,” Crowley saluted with a glass, “Has anyone ever told you that your tongue is charming, and full of tact?”

“No,” the woman said. “But they have told me that I am always right.”

The woman said: “I wouldn’t go for Derek Hale first.”

“ _Please_. He’s much easier. When you haven’t done this in a while, some warm up,” Crowley swiveled the laptop on the vine-curled end table to her view, “would be rather useful. Take a look - this man has more biceps than friends. An admirable achievement, in my book, but humans are such inconsistent creatures.”

“In fact,” Crowley said, as if struck by a cheerful thought, “Hale has nobody. No one. _Nada_. These cases are pretty much open-and-shut. Well - if you can get them before they commit suicide, that is.”

The woman rose, not bothering to dress. The scent of summer peaches billowed in her wake. Derek Hale and his abs was replaced with an image of the boy, stubborn-jawed in his red hoodie, standing beside his - what did you call it? Yes. _Pack_.

“Nah,” Crowley said, over the wineglass. “Too many attachments. Too many reasons to cling to Earth.”

Crowley said: “When you are picking the most vulnerable, dearest, you pick the one with nothing to live for.”

“And I suppose this one has everything to live for,” the woman murmured, as if to the screen. A moment passed. Her lips stretched slightly, very pink.

“Everything to live for,” she said, in a more charming tone. “Or everything to die for?”

 

*

 

The man’s name was Jimmy Granger. He had come from Texas. He had been divorced twice by twenty-five, and currently lived alone. His driver’s license stated that he was brown-haired and green-eyed, and milky pale, with a height of 6’0” and a weight of 160 pounds. A gambling addiction had ruined an illustrious career in the IRS, and a more vivid one in the Baptist church, and now he waited tables at Beacon Hill’s thinly-veiled knockoff version of Denny’s.

It was called Benny’s, and the man was no longer Jimmy Granger.

Stiles didn’t know why _this_ dude had to be it. It wasn’t like the taxman popped out of nowhere to crap all over their lives, like the werewolves did, or Jackson’s adventures in herpetology. They had tussled with a rash of these smirking, black-eyed bastards back in July, and Stiles still had the scars on his ankle to prove it. They had consulted in the wake of that mess with their friendly neighborhood Men In Black, doctors Deaton and Morell. Learned their devil’s traps. Stocked up on salt. Identified suspects, among them one Jimmy Granger (demons might have human shells but most gave themselves away, sooner or later, when they gave in to their natures and could no longer resist gloating). Stiles could now recite the exorcism in his sleep, what sleep he could get.

It wasn’t much.

Maybe it was coming. Maybe they should’ve listened to Derek, and butted their ( _very young, and very, very stupid_ ) noses out. But there was the problem of the Argents. Namely, the problem of Allison being an Argent, and Scott being in love with Allison, and the whole thing demons had against hunters (well, humanity in general, but especially the hunters).

And with Scott getting involved, well... you always got two for the price of one.

Even if the other one was about as useful as an extra fruitcake.

Mister Revenge-of-the-Taxman was - _bad_. His eyes, when he cornered them, two humans and a young werewolf, flooded thick with licorice red, not black. He was stronger than what they’d seen before, like these assholes came in different levels and expansion packs. He threw Scott into the wall, where his head crunched into the brick and graffiti with this, Stiles lurched, _sound_. He cracked the asphalt where they’d prepared the devil’s trap and pinned Stiles’s leg in three separate places with rubble. After the initial bright burst of shock it hurt something awful, Stiles had to bite back the scream; but then he heard it.

Heard that voice, that gravelly _asshole_ , muse out loud about raping her.

“It’s okay,” Lydia said later, her breath steady. “Thanks, Mr. Argent.”

“You need to be more careful,” Chris Argent said, shoving the gun in the trunk. “From now on, there should be a _minimum_ of two werewolves in each group. Travel in packs. You know this.”

Stiles was silent on the way home.

Lydia unwound the scarf around her neck, dangling it to him without looking, her eyes fixed on the road where she was driving. “Here,” she said brightly, “You look cold. Seriously, it’s starting to get chilly already.”

When they reached the house Scott looked at his leg, frowning, but it wasn’t that many paces from Lydia’s car to the front door, and Stiles steered himself out with some unmemorable quip about it.

He managed to make it inside before collapsing.

The lights were off. His dad wasn’t home yet, thankfully. He let his eyes close. He’d get this cleaned up, figure out how to cover up the limp, once his chest stopped heaving for air.

Once his chest stopped filling up with - this. Whatever it was. Failure. Hollowing. Relief, but not the kind you wanted, a numb kind of feeling. They hadn’t gotten the demon. They hadn’t done anything. Lydia - _they’d_ been spared, again, in the nick of time. The same as it was last week, with they realized one of them had taken Erica’s mom and they tried and they tried but it ended with her sliding a cooking knife into her own stomach, black-eyed and smirking, and the week before, when a little girl had been carved apart into a gruesome pentacle, making the national news, making Stiles listen every night for that careful sound, those footsteps of his father going out after he thought Stiles was sleeping.

The same as it was with Matt. The same as it was with Grandpa Homicide and the kanima, when Scott retreated into a bristling wall of tension and the semifinals were approaching like something out of a bad dream and Stiles was so, so sure he was going to die.

And then they didn’t die.

A freaking miracle had buoyed them back up to the surface and the sun was out and shining and, don’t get him wrong, the breath felt freaking _amazing_ , but Stiles was finally beginning to see it now: the fact that they were still in the sea. And _just the sea_. There wouldn’t be an end to this. There couldn’t be. They’d trespassed into the dark and Stiles, stupid Stiles, was all excited at first because _whoa_ , _werewolves!_ but what he hadn’t realized was that _the dark would never let you go_. You got the girlfriend and the captaincy, but that meant you had to take the hunters too. You had to take the kanimas, and the demons, and the dying, all that crap hell threw at you. Your dad getting beat up, your friends getting beat up, the panic attacks. This constant fear of, just, _everything_.

(Yeah. He hadn’t seen Ms. Morell lately, but... yeah. He could deal with it, though, this time around.)

I mean, it wasn’t like he was going to give up and pack it in or anything. But you could only take drinking piss for so long before you became a soldier too, but not one of the good ones, just - a soldier. A teenage kid in a war. And not even one of the ones with claws or super-strength or anything, just a sarcastic mouth and a shitty Jeep and a shittier sense of self-preservation that had somehow (and he had no idea how) escaped watching this movie’s end, which was basically gravestones and people crying and sons dying before fathers and Stiles hating himself and... right. All that shitty stuff.

Not that Stiles was bitter or whiny or anything. Long as his dad was alive, long as his friends were alive, he could take it. Wasn’t like there was any other option, anyways. 

A while passed. The clock ticking in the kitchen was loud and he let it wash over him for a while, because it was kinda peaceful. Fall was settling in, and their first exams would be starting next week. Junior year was scary, but at least he was already done with his SATs.

Distractedly, his hand drifted up to his cheek. You couldn’t see it, but months later, the imprint of the scar was still there. If you felt for it.

When he opened his eyes, a stranger was standing there.

 

*

 

It didn’t work, the first time. Crowley didn’t expect to. The speech he gave was grand, adapted from a used-car salesman he had one of the interns dive into, but he’d been watching this one long enough to suspect one had to chisel at it with a subtle nail and hammer. The boy’s ears would be closed.

Or so he thought.

 

*

 

He’d been sleeping, but it was a pleasant alarm. One he did not mind indulging for once.

 “Well? Let’s hear it,” the boy said, seeming not at all surprised that calling Crowley’s name had worked. 

It didn’t take long. Crowley paced the kitchen. Ran through the imminence of the threat they - his _pack_ \- was under. The kind of power on offer. The complications of that power. The grandeur of the boy’s sacrifice. The boy didn’t want to hear it. Crowley returned to the practicalities.

By the time Crowley finished his closing argument, the sunlight had faded, and the boy was silent. Crowley was not sure what to think, or dare hope. Usually you wanted them sweaty, twitchy, pondering whether they could outwit the King of Hell before the years were up; or in this case, moved to tears by the realization they would give their lives for a cause. But the boy’s face was hard to make out. His eyes downcast, fixed on the table he was sitting at, as if there were answers in the cherry tablecloth.

“Well?” ventured the King of Hell, spreading his hands, magnanimous. “What do you think?”

After a long moment, it came, though as something so soft he almost didn’t catch it:

“Okay,” the boy was saying, slowly.

“Perfect.” Trying to contain the rush of relief and glee (other demons could gloat, but he’d only made it in life through self-discipline), Crowley stepped forward quickly, tugging his suit straight. “Now, we just have to seal it with a kiss -”

The boy lifted his eyes. They were dry.

“On certain conditions,” the boy finished in a hard voice.

 

*

 

There was once a sculptor called Pygmalion.

Crowley thought he’d seen him once, at a winter formal, pointed out to him by an eager young pet with blonde hair and little else. _He made a statue,_ the boy had whispered in the frost, though Crowley was rather more distracted by the view of a nubile young waist, which flowed into a posterior that he was pressing against the King of Hell with admirable initiative.

 _So_? was what Crowley murmured. Or something like it.

 _Sculptors are supposed to make statues_ , Crowley said.

 _But this one had a soul,_ the boy whispered.

Of course it was impossible. Every half-witted spawn of the supernatural knew it: one could not craft a soul out of nothing. Some four hundred years later, and Crowley could confirm in each of those years that this was indeed, like most rumors, rubbish, but the sculptor’s fifteen minutes of fame had unfortunately solidified into myth. All while Crowley and his kind were doing, with erratic but earnest professionalism, the opposite.

No one could make a man from a statue, while there were plenty of those who existed precisely to make statues from men.

Such is the difference between rubbish and immortality among humans, Crowley thought. Wish fulfillment. Always wanting something, from nothing.

Crowley could at least appreciate this: the boy knew what he had to give. He was willing.

Stupid, but Crowley had made his career out of human stupidity.

And now he would benefit again. You had to be a special talent like the King of Hell to hear it, but his soul, when Crowley had held it in his hand, murmured with the subtle undernotes that suggested a rare and beautiful attunement to the dark. It excited Crowley; so this was not a pet project after all, but a gift to the dark. A powerful one, if nurtured, if matched to Crowley’s ambition.

A little Prince of Hell, even - but Crowley didn’t want to get too far ahead of himself.

The moon had begun to rise, a pale ghost. The grey September air was beginning to seep into his suit. He had taken them outside, into the backwoods, where this delicate process could unfold itself in peace. In the house up on the hill, a light had come on in the kitchen. Was still on. From where he was sitting, idly, in the branches, the body on the bed of red leaves began to stir.

Crowley tucked away his NookBook (humans were pitiful, really, but their contraptions on the other hand...).

“You’re a slow one.”

The boy was shivering. Bits of leaves clung to his jeans and jacket, which he shook off as he stood up in one liquid motion. It was too deep in twilight to see the eyes. He stilled at Crowley’s voice.

“You,” the boy said, simply.

“Ah. That’s right. _Me_.” Crowley indulged his newest piece of art with a Cheshire smile. He doubted Pygmalion had made anything half so pretty, or warm-blooded; so sweetly crafted for wreaking misery on human life. “Welcome to earth. Mind the gap.”

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “we need to take care of business before pleasure. Now, boy, how much can you remember?”

The boy shrugged. His lips were very pink as they angled, as if in thought. “I remember you saying something about a trade. I gave you my soul, didn’t I?” The inflection in the tone, if any, was hard to work out. Crowley was slightly disappointed, but not surprised; a touch of roboticness was common among young ones, who lacked the direction and depth of emotion necessary for real passion and thus, real hate.

“And in exchange,” the boy continued, “I’ve got your powers.”

Suddenly, the strange insistent sensation at Crowley’s feet was unmistakable. Insolent.

“Stop pushing me.” Crowley let out an exasperated breath, rolled his eyes. “You haven’t got _my_ strength, little kitten. I’m the King of Hell, your creator. I gave you demonic power, alright, but no more than what your flimsy human body could take -”

The branch snapped.

“It’s not my fault,” the boy’s voice, innocently, “that you’re fat.”

Crowley got up. Snapped his fingers. And watched with great satisfaction as the boy was lifted several feet into midair, where his slender mortal legs squirmed uselessly.

The King of Hell did not usually hear such... juvenile rebelliousness from _anyone_ , much less a child. But a bit of frustration now and the later reward would be that much more satisfying, he supposed.

“You have rather worse problems than me,” he drawled, picking a crinkled leaf off his suit. “Or did you forget the conditions of your contract already?”

The boy stilled. Was silent for a moment. Then:

“...Stay virginal forever? Defile a church? Assassinate the Pope?”

Pause. “Crap. I didn’t agree to sleep with you, did I?”

“ _No_ , _dummkopf_ ,” Crowley sighed, delicately ignoring the muttered ‘oh thank god’ that followed. The boy was deposited none too gently on the ground. “The details of your rather Modernist contract. The terms that _you_ made me put in. Like, oh, being stuck in Beacon Hills until you, AKA soulless avenger, finish defeating all the, quote unquote, ‘bad guys’. Your words. Along with the inviolable condition to not harm anyone on _this_ list -” with another snap of the fingers, a sheet of parchment materialized in front of the boy’s face, “ _and_ the condition that they remain in the dark over this... _not-having-a-soul_ business.”

“Though your words, if I remember correctly,” Crowley said, dryly, “were slightly more colorful. _Touch a hair on their heads and go fucking die in a magma pot, you asshole.”_

“That was addressed to you, mind you,” Crowley said.

“Soulless avenger,” Crowley said.

“Whoa whoa whoa, wait. Back up. I can’t harm - as in _physically harm_ \- any of these people?” The parchment was snatched with new urgency. At the top, the word _CONTRACT_ was inscribed in voluminous gold, gothic filigree. The way the boy’s eyes twitched in horror was a delight, really. (Crowley was feeling slighty less indulgent of his little kitten now that it was apparent housetraining was in order.) “ _What the hell?_ ”

“You didn’t trust yourself. Rather wisely, in my opinion. The assumption was that once you were relieved of your soul, you’d kill all your friends, run off, and go around setting fire to things and trolling old people. Your words.”

The boy was not listening. He was distracted. His mouth moved. “And I am expressly not to let any of them find out about my soullessness.”

“It’s there in plain English,” Crowley said, lightly. “You’ll have to fool them. Make them think you’re still ‘their’ Stiles.”

“You’ll have to pretend to have a soul,” Crowley said.

The parchment dropped, abruptly, revealing an unamused face. “Then how am I supposed to have fun?” Annoyed.

“Quit whining, for one,” Crowley shrugged. The boy’s irritation was pleasing, in truth, confirming that he was indeed one of their kind; but it was also something to manage with care, so the boy’s frustration did not push him to do something rash. The ambition was clearly there but ambition, as Crowley well knew, had to be married to self-discipline, and it was the lack of the latter that typically led to the downfall of most of his kind. “Just get rid of the other demons, finish your silly contract, and then you’re free to go and cause as much mayhem as you wish.”

“And if I happened to break this contract?”

“Then - _poof_ ,” Crowley mimed the sound with his hands. “No more you. What’s left of you. I suggest,” with extra emphasis, “given that I know you still have a sterling sense of self-preservation, to follow the terms of your contract. Whose conditions, let me repeat, _you_ made me put in.”

“You should’ve stopped me,” the boy said, rolling up the parchment. He lifted his gray jacket and tucked it into his belt. The waist was narrow. The top of his boxers, red plaid, was peeking out. In between movements Crowley caught a rare, pleasing sliver of bare skin.

The King of Hell swallowed.

“You were … a tough customer. A haggler. But you agreed to an irreversible exchange, which means you will never have your soul back. You humans have far more leeway in bargaining with those.”

“Yeah, well - I feel like smacking myself,” the boy snorted. “I mean, clear out a whole city? You’re basically cockroaches. If cockroaches were invisible, and wanted to kill me. The people on this list will be dead before I’m done.”

“There are - other options,” Crowley began.

“Forget it,” the boy said, clearly too annoyed to listen.

He was turning, making to leave. But Crowley was not finished, though he was not sure why; the impulse was sudden, unbidden.

_Irreversible._

“Wait.” Crowley stopped. Hesitated.

“How... what are you feeling?”

The boy stilled, like an arrow, taut.

“Feeling?”

“It’s a pretty big change,” Crowley said. “No regrets?”

It took a moment. But then the boy looked back, and Crowley saw that he was grinning.

“I feel _great_.”

And he was off, darting into the green depths of the backwood. Crowley watched him go. The boy’s footsteps were quick and soundless in flight, as if skimming the leaves, like a doe’s.

Hm.

Slowly, in the solitude, Crowley’s lips began to curl into a genuine smile.

This had been... well,  _perfect_. Their small exchange had revealed promise - impudence, yes, but promise. The boy was brimming with it. Already Crowley was sure that the nature of this one’s evil would not the blunt malignance of his brothers and sisters, but rather something delightful, subtle, a truly eloquent damascene of cruelty. It would take a bit of work to make the boy _heel_ , no doubt, but once made to yield, well... with Crowley as master, endless vistas of possibility opened. They would execute chaos with precision. Cities would burn. People would suffer. The dark would rise again - ah, but there he was getting too far ahead of himself as usual.

And the King of Hell was left one soul richer, one soul heavier. It was a pleasant sensation, as always, that settled lazily in his gut like a milk-whiskered cat, but he stood for a moment longer in the evening air. There was something niggling at him, something he’d forgotten. Eventually, he muttered under his breath.

“I didn’t finish telling you the part about Derek Hale,” he sighed.

 

*

 

Everyone knew the jukebox at Benny’s didn’t work, but the waitress mentioned it anyways, along with their late dinner special for six ninety nine. The dining area was ill-lit and beginning to clear out of everything but old fogies and cheap smoke. The waitress was chewing gum. The thumb-stained menu was held right at his height, slack, in front of his nose. This was the uglier one, the mean one. Her gnarly knuckles were scary.

“Mom,” he prodded her, “I’m hungry.”

“Shush honey,” she said, not glancing away from her iPhone. “Mommy’s busy.”

He turned back to his coloring. It looked like a stegosaurus, if the stegosaurus had a faggy purple hat and Down syndrome. Six spindly spikes later, a flash of grey squeezed into the booth beside him.

He glanced up. Teenage dude, poking out his neck to look around the room like a dork. His baseball cap was on backwards. Like this was the nineties.

“Sup,” the dude said, lifting a hand, when he saw him.

Shrug.

“Whatcha coloring?”

He put down the green crayon and picked up the yellow. Man, he hoped they would hurry up with his cheeseburger.

“Dude. Can I borrow one of your crayons?” The guy’s voice dropped. Mournfully: “I begged the waitress already, but she said I was too big for ‘em.”

“You shouldn’t have asked Cheryl,” he replied, matter-of-factly. Continuing to scribble.

After a moment, he paused. Let out a dramatic sigh. Looks like this guy was a total noob. “What. You don’t even have a date?”

The eyebrow raised. “Kid, do I _look_ like the type that can get a girlfriend?”

“Good point,” he said, passing him the red.

 

*

 

Jimmy Granger saw the Mets cap first.

How unexpected, this delight; it wasn’t Jimmy’s workday, but he would’ve thought the boy and the rest of his friends would’ve been scared off by now, permanently. The expectation was a lengthy, if pleasurable, hunt.

In the next instant, it overwhelmed him. The rush, heady and sleek, of _prey_. It had been a while. Well - no more than 48 hours, but. This was a kind of addiction, and Jimmy Granger knew his addictions. He decided Natalie could wait.

A cursory glance around the scant dining room revealed that the boy was not there. But close, surely. He could feel it, vibrating, a greedy pulse within him.

The only pulse within him.

He opened the bathroom door, and the figure at the sink whirled around, eyes blown open in shock.

Jimmy smiled.

The door clicked locked behind him.

“Hi again,” Jimmy said with real pleasure, and watched how the boy’s eyes, huge, brown, fringed in thick lashes, fluttered in fear. In an instant, Jimmy couldn’t remember why he’d even looked at the girl last time.

He wanted to fuck this one first.

“You don’t have to be scared of me,” he crooned, approaching slowly, the red tint slipping in and out of his vision. “I just want a little fun, that’s all. We can have some fun, can’t we?”

The bathroom was large, metallic, but it was a limited space, stark in halogen light. The boy was whimpering uncontrollably. His back was pressed to the wall, as far it could go, his fingers scrambling futilely at the limegreen tiles. It was dark outside in the windows behind his head.

Such a slender thing. Young-looking, in the cropped hair and lumpy gray jacket. Jimmy had bruised the leg earlier, under stone. Now he wanted to fuck this kid till the thighs bled, till the shirt soaked with tears, the waist gripped in a brutal vise as he’d force himself deeper into a pulsing heat he knew would be tight, resistant, again and again, wringing out the cries.

Wrapped in this warming fantasy, he didn’t notice it until it was too late.

“You know, that’s a pretty lame trick,” the boy said. “Seriously. I can’t believe you fell for it.”

The boy’s tone had abruptly reversed. He was no longer quivering. Now he was leaning against the tiled wall, not moving, his arms crossed, his posture relaxed. His thick-lashed gaze, when Jimmy found it, measured his steadily.

Jimmy didn’t need to look up to know there was a devil’s trap drawn on the ceiling.

“Did you a favor,” the boy said. “Could’ve used sharpies, but crayons aren’t so waterproof.”

Jimmy grinned. A well of laughter inside him began to bubble up to the surface, which he didn’t bother to suppress. The boy’s head tilted, as if confused. Adorable little thing.

“You were too hasty. It’s shoddy work. This little circle won’t hold me -” and he began pushing at the boy’s slender form, and the stall doors began wobbling with a metallic din, the row of ceramic sinks beginning to shake at the seams -

\- then, suddenly, it was gone.

No, not gone, but being _pressed back_ , another force -

With a sharp grunt, Jimmy found himself laid out - pushed _down_ \- dragged out of the trap by nothing at all -

“No,” Jimmy said. It was impossible.

The boy leaned over Jimmy’s supine form, hands on his hips, casual-like. His eyes were black.

All black.

“Not bad,” the boy said, lips stretching slightly.

Jimmy tried, but even his wrists wouldn’t budge. It was like he was being weighed down from head to toe by an even, suffocating pressure, like a thick coat, like the sterile air had become a slab of stone. He couldn’t believe it. His mouth opened. Closed. “You’re one of us.”

“No, I’m Penn & Steller’s latest act. _Duh_. Course I’m one of you, dumbass.”

Jimmy let out a muttered breath. Of course. There were others. Plenty of others. Jimmy was stronger than some of these other footsoldiers, but still - a glorified grunt was a grunt, all the same. And the hierarchy was probably not too pleased with him and his ... indiscretions. Fuck.

“Fine, you’ve proved your point. Let me go.”

“Nah,” the boy said.

“In fact,” the boy said, lightly, reaching a hand into Jimmy’s pockets to pull out the contents - a phone, which he deposited into his own pocket without glancing, and a wallet, which he picked up exquisitely with his thumb and forefinger, like a soiled napkin, and let hang to tumble open - “I got a few questions for you, Jimmy.”

“Let me go, or _fuck off._ ” Jimmy bared his teeth.

“You know,” the boy continued, conversationally, “I saw the waitress - Natalie, right? The younger, bubbly one? Well I noticed her shiny new earrings, and she couldn’t wait to tell me all about this great new boyfriend of hers. Apparently after years of drudgery in this hellhole, he’d just won big at the casino. Like, half a million big.”

“Guess it was the devil’s luck,” Jimmy snapped. He was growing uneasy; for some reason the boy’s force was loosening Jimmy’s shirt from where it was tucked in his slacks, scrunching it up to the collar, baring his chest. The air was acute. “Okay, fine. If you want my money, just take it and -”

“Dude, I’m not begrudging you your money,” the boy said. He knelt down and took out from his own jacket a handful of something that spread on the floor, something that Jimmy couldn’t see properly. The lump. “I’m just curious.”

“Why,” the boy said, “would a man who’d come into fortune stay at his shitty old minimum-wage job?”

Jimmy felt it then, a sharp, burning sensation on his skin -

Salt.

The little fucker was using salt.

“ _Fuck you,_ ” Jimmy half-snarled, half-gasped, as the boy dangled a salt packet Jimmy recognized from _Benny’s_ dining tables in front of his eyes. “You little piece of -”

“I mean, why would a demon continue to live his meatsuit’s old life? Why romance a coworker - a pretty girl, but still, you know, small town - when he could hitch it to Vegas and have some _real_ fun?”

“ _Fuck_ \- _off_ -”

“And I know you like your fun, Jimmy,” the boy drawled, sounding distracted from where he was bent over Jimmy’s abdomen, like he was concentrating real hard, the fucker. It felt like cigarette burns, a neat, precise line of fiery blossoms. Forget rape - Jimmy would fucking rip this kid’s guts out first, once he got loose, and _then_ he’d make him scream -

“I mean,” the boy said, “if I were a demon, I’d go wild. Eat fries for breakfast. Pee on my chem teacher. Nuke South Korea so I can finally win at Starcraft.”

“Fucker, you’re just a _little bitch_ -”

“Boy, you’re a romantic,” the boy said.

Then, suddenly, a bang outside, followed in the next moment by a woman’s shriek. The dining room. Something was happening.

“Aw, crap,” the boy muttered under his breath, without moving. But Jimmy could feel it then, the pressure loosening unevenly at the edges as if the kid’s concentration was slipping, and his deltoids bunched in anticipation of a _lunge_ at the kid’s neck, a pale column so tantalizingly close and vulnerable -

\- when, without warning, there was a white light.

 

*

 

Stiles had barely managed to finish the last word of the exorcism when he heard the muffled thump on the bathroom door. The salt packet dropped. The scream of the demon being torn out of Jimmy Granger’s mouth in a chimney of black smoke overlayered the sound of the window being yanked open and, rather ungracefully, his tumbling out onto the wildgrass.

“Ow,” he muttered, rubbing his ass.

A crash. The bathroom door was now, bluntly, open.

Stiles twisted. Ran, sleek-footed, cutting around the corner past the restaurant’s parking lot, where he glimpsed the black Camaro in a blur before the shapeless copse swallowed him into the night.

Heavier footsteps pounded behind him. His pursuer was giving chase, true to his trail, without hesitation. He’d have to be careful with the telekinesis, Stiles decided. The sulfur smell was a pain in the ass.

Especially when it came to werewolves.

The spiny branches clipped at his arms as he pushed his way into a deeper, denser direction. A less worked path. The underbrush was thick, resistant. Mossy, pine-accented air greeted his lungs as he finally shoved himself free of the forest and darted in the narrow space between the rock growths. It was a new moon. There was no glimmer.

Gathering the last of his strength, Stiles plunged into the river.

And submerged. His body was still human, still needed oxygen, but he forced himself below as the river swept him downstream, until he couldn’t take it anymore and clawed to the surface, gasping.

There were no footsteps, no splash behind him. It worked.

Stiles let out a breath in relief. Derek Hale had never liked the water.

 

*

 

It felt good.

 

*

 

“Your name is Stiles Stilinski. You are sixteen years old, and nine months. Your father is the sheriff, though not a very good one. You have no attention span except for useless things. You have always wanted a dog, but have thus far been thwarted by allergies.”

In the mirror, the fingers traced a path down the flat span of the stomach.

“You are insanely pale. You have no abs. Though at least you have biceps, I guess. And extra points for the freckles.”

Swinging to the closet, the white doors were thrown open with a nonchalant flourish:

“Oh god, you dress like a heterosexual man. An _aggressively_ heterosexual man.”

The single rack, whose theme this fall seemed to be gray and red, was brushed through with increasing alacrity. “If the man were homophobic, and you were gay, and he wanted to torture you in more thrilling ways.”

Plopping down on the bed, back still wet from the shower:

“You have one actual friend. A few others tolerate sitting at the same lunch table as you. A disturbing proportion are werewolves. _Sulfur smelling werewolves_.”

His mouth twisted. “Do you accept this mission, agent Stilinski?”

The ceiling blinked back at him.

Stiles bit back a groan. Childish of him, but seriously - it wasn’t _fair_. This _Stiles’s_ life was pathetic. This _Stiles_ was a complete and utter loser, who obsessed over other losers. Who wanted to _keep_ being a loser as much as he could, as if his old life meant something, something valuable. Which was just laughable; yeah, sure, Jimmy tonight had been satisfying in a way that still glowed throughout Stiles’s exhausted bones, but Jimmy was still a demon, and Stiles’s kind was meant to break _humans_. Two-legged, flimsy, soul-possessing humans.

Humans he was not supposed to touch, according to a certain moronic contract.

Not that there was a script or anything (and even if there were, he wouldn’t follow it) but going by impulse every one of his kind was probably off doing very, very bad, but oh-so-satisfying things to humanity. Conning idiots. Instigating massacres. Pulling apart families. Meanwhile, _Stiles_ had to play poop-scooper to a bunch of overgrown mutts. _Secretly_. A secret poop-scooper.

Worst. Comicbook hero. _Ever_.

But - he splayed his hand to the light - this body felt pretty good. Wrung out, yeah, after just one spin, but that was something he could work on with practice. The thing was, he felt incredibly light now, translucent even, as if all these weights had been lifted; weights he hadn’t even known were there.

He was free.

Well - not totally, obviously. He was stuck here for now. But technically he just had to get this over with, and then he’d be free. _Really_ free.

He’d lost a few hours, the hours with Crowley, but otherwise this _Stiles’s_ memories were all intact. He’d skimmed through some of them but they were as boring as expected, and he figured the only one he really had to watch for was Scott McCall, who was dumber than a pet rock but could probably figure something was up if his best friend cheerfully started torturing squirrels for fun. The sheriff was so busy Stiles only saw him at night, but Scott and his dopey chin took up most of his school hours, which was nine hours he’d have to keep from strangling him.

So. Scott. Scott was the problem, but one gullible enough to manage. Around him, he’d just have to act as non-evil and normal as possible. Keep up the grades. Remind Scott the lockers are _right turn_ first. Continue the sterling career on the bench in lacrosse.

Act helpless in a fight. Stiles slid off the bed and knelt down, fumbling to fish out his old lacrosse stick from under the bed. He turned it upside down, shaft side up; caught sight of it in the mirror. Its pocket had held up to some five years of battering, and showed it, and the alloy was nicked and dented in places like a prizefighter (in his stubbornness, he’d refused to euthanize it until last season, when Coach Finstock started shivering and crying at the sight of it).

“Like other things,” Stiles smiled at the mirror, eyes glittering, “the new version is better.”

Going to the desk, he opened the drawer and pulled out the parchment. Laid it out. Began to screw off the cap at the end of the lacrosse stick’s shaft.

The curlicued letters _CONTRACT_ stared up at him, mockingly.

He glided a hand over it. Pushed fingertips into it. Papyrus. Rough.

_You may not harm them._

_You may not tell them_.

“Fuck off, Stiles,” he muttered, and rolled up the parchment and stuffed it into the shaft, none too delicately, corking the end.

He’d follow the terms, for now. It was unavoidable. But unless some miracle happened and Hell froze over, popsicling most of its residents, this sentence would be far too long. There had to be some way out. A loophole.

Though … he was better, obviously, but by virtue of _being_ him, this Stiles had also been known for being clever. Annoying. Among other things. He glanced sideways at the mirror. Something itched; his cheek.

 _You were a tough customer_ , Crowley had said, but it hadn't been irritation that'd been in his voice. 

**Author's Note:**

> Note that Stiles is now soulless but NOT possessed by a demon, though he is, for all intents and purposes, a demon, with the typical demonic powers and weaknesses. The sulfur smell only emerges when he uses his telekinetic power.
> 
> Influences include Machiavelli, the poet Algernon Swinburne ('the poppied sleep'), and of course Dante's Inferno.
> 
> Comments/reviews much appreciated! Feel free to ask me questions since there are a lot of things I've left murky here, but there are some things I may not be able to clarify due to future spoilers.
> 
> It will be full steam ahead in Stiles’s POV from now on. :)


End file.
